


Tell Me About Heaven

by imaginationisrainbowcoloured



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adam Milligan in Lucifer's Cage, Archangels, Canon Compliant, Come on you know how this ends, Consent, Domestic Fluff, Family, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Happy, Lucifer in the Cage (Supernatural), Lucifer's Cage (Supernatural), M/M, Memories, Michael Possessing Adam Milligan, Michael in Lucifer's Cage (Supernatural), Minor Character(s), Not Chuck Friendly, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24388855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginationisrainbowcoloured/pseuds/imaginationisrainbowcoloured
Summary: “As most humans know; in the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. What they don’t know is before the beginning, when God created me and it was mostly just the two of us- occasionally accompanied by one who was similar to Him, balanced Him out."“The Darkness, right? Amara?”“Hush, Adam. Yes, it was Amara, but she had no name then. Nobody did.”
Relationships: Castiel & Gabriel (Supernatural), Gabriel & Lucifer & Michael & Raphael (Supernatural), Gabriel & Lucifer & Michael (Supernatural), Gabriel & Lucifer (Supernatural), Gabriel & Michael (Supernatural), Gabriel & Raphael (Supernatural), Lucifer & Michael (Supernatural), Michael & Adam Milligan, Michael/Adam Milligan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	Tell Me About Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> An imagining of one of the ways Michael and Adam passed the time in the cage, while making it kinda shippy and also happy enough that I hope some people cry at the end.  
> Did I just want to write happy angel family? Yes? Does this end happily? No. You know how this ends.
> 
> Anyway, I haven't written fanfiction in a while, and I haven't written anything of this length ever, so please be kind, but also please leave comments. :)

_“As most humans know; in the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. What they don’t know is before the beginning, when God created me and it was mostly just the two of us- occasionally accompanied by one who was similar to Him and balanced Him out.”_  
_“The Darkness, right? Amara?”_  
_“Hush, Adam. Yes, it was Amara, but she had no name back then. Nobody did.”_  
*  
It was one of the times when it was just Michael and his Father, the way Michael had found he preferred. There was no time, so it was impossible to say how long he had existed, although he knew he had existed for longer than he had been called Michael- he hadn’t been Michael for very long, but Father had said it was his name, and that was now how He addressed him. The Darkness, who had become Amara at some point the same way he had become Michael, was off doing whatever she did when she wasn’t with Michael and Father, and Michael would have said that was how she spent most of her time, but he had no concept of time or most or anything aside from utter devotion to his Father.  
Regardless, it was some distant point before the creation of the universe and it was just Michael and Father staring off into the nothingness that they existed in when Father told him He was planning to create more like Michael- similar to him but different, in the same as Himself and The Darkness. He told Michael they would be his ‘siblings’ and he was to raise and care for them with the same devotion He had given Michael in his youth. Michael agreed to do so without hesitation, but at that point- and for most of his existence- he would have ripped out his own wings if Father had told him to, so it could be argued that this did not mean much in the grand scheme of things relating to consent.

  
Michael waited patiently for the fore-mentioned siblings to arrive, eager to fulfil the only task he had been given so far and eager to do something to earn his Father’s attention, yet before Father created them, He created somewhere for all of them, and Him, to live- Heaven, He called it, and He also told Michael to call it his home. After Heaven’s creation, Amara began to visit less and less, staying away from the two of them longer than she had before. Michael did not ask Father about her, and when she had been gone for long enough that Michael struggled to call up the memory of her form, God presented him with another one like him. A small angel He said was to be called Lucifer. An angel who was to be God’s left hand while Michael was His right.  
Lucifer was beautiful, more beautiful than anything Michael had ever seen, and he was tiny, at first, but grew with the nurture of Michael’s grace and Lucifer’s own grace soon became even brighter. Being presented with Lucifer was the first time- and only time for most of his existence- that Michael considered he could love any being more than his Father.  
*  
_“What was the other time? Times?”_  
_“Here,” Michael replied, not as snippy as Adam expected at being interrupted, “with you.”_  
*  
After Lucifer was old enough to run about Heaven alone, or with minimal supervision- when he didn’t need Michael’s attention all the time- God came once again and presented the two of them with another tiny angel- Raphael. She was also beautiful, but the memory of the energy it had taken to raise Lucifer was probably why she didn’t inspire the same consideration of loving someone more than Father. And as he raised her, Raphael listened to Michael in ways that Lucifer had not, she did not disobey even half as much and the few times that she did were at Lucifer’s persuasion. When Michael would reflect on it, many years later, he would acknowledge that she was the easiest to raise out of every angel that ever came into being. She became interested how her grace healed at a young age and the way it swirled into Michael or Lucifer’s when she was feeling particularly strong emotions. God told Michael, once in confidence, that she would become the healer of all angels. Michael did not ask how many angels there would be, no matter how much he desired to know. Lucifer did ask. God laughed.

  
Gabriel was given to them before Raphael had finished growing, and he adored Lucifer on sight despite the fact that Michael was the one who cared for him and taught him how to fly. If Michael had been familiar with emotions he might have recognised that he was unhappy and slightly jealous, but God had never taught him about feelings or even hinted at their existence, so he wasn’t aware of the cause behind the pressure in his chest or how to deal with it and he trained more vigorously with his sword to make Father pleased.  
*  
_“Michael? Are you still there? What happened?”_  
_“My apologies, your brother’s soul has been taken.”_  
_“At least it isn’t kicking around here without a body.”_  
_“They did not even look for you.” Michael told him, and he sounded more betrayed than Adam actually felt._  
_“Do you want to continue with your story?”_  
*  
There was still no concept of time, but if there had been, Michael would have known that the four of them had several millennia to play and do as they wished. Very often, Father would come and give them a task or two to do among the four of them- mostly creating small clusters of gas that he referred to as stars- but even that was happy and gentle. They flew around Father’s new creation- the universe and weaved in and out of each other; Gabriel particularly enjoyed trying to knock into the three of them hard enough that they lost control of their wings briefly and plummeted.

  
God hadn’t yet decided that gravity would only be for certain things, and it was everywhere they went- a constant pull down that strengthened their wings as they pulled against it.

  
At night they returned to Heaven to curl up together and rest- it was one of the only things that Father insisted upon, Michael couldn’t fathom why since they had seemingly no reason to do so, but His will was obeyed, and Gabriel and Lucifer seemed to enjoy it anyway.  
That was their life for the first few millennia of existence, and Michael grew to love his siblings in the exact way that Father had told him to- dwelling on that for the first time, was also the first time that he realised Amara had not once visited Heaven since it had been created, but she was Father’s sister, so surely they must love each other as he loved Gabriel, Lucifer and Raphael?

  
“You seem troubled, Michael, what is wrong?”

  
He looked up into his Father’s eyes. No matter how much they grew, Father was always taller than them, and he always had to look up to speak to him. With permission given, he asked his query about Amara, and God laughed softly in response,

  
“Sometimes,” He said, sitting next to Michael and laying a gentle hand on his shoulder, “it is good to spend time apart from your siblings to develop your own, personal interests. Amara and I have differing interests so we’re developing them apart from each other. Do you understand?”

  
Michael didn’t but he nodded anyway and privately thought that he would never want to be apart from any of his three siblings. Even if Gabriel and Raphael’s incessant curiosity could be too much sometimes, and Lucifer’s pranks were more annoying than they were funny sometimes, the three of them were all he had- aside from his Father- and they were always there.  
*  
_“You’re quite good at foreshadowing.”_  
_“It wasn’t something that I ever thought could happen, at the time.”_  
_“I’m sorry.”_  
*  
God deemed them ‘old enough’ out of the blue, and would not explain what He meant by that or what they were old enough for, but after that he demanded that they spend more time in Heaven than out of it. They did, of course and wandered around the wide-open spaces, adding trees and plants in certain places to make it happier and more homely. The office-like part of Heaven had not yet been created, since there was not yet anything for anyone to keep records of as there would be once the souls started coming in. Not that the four archangels had any idea that was going to happen.

  
Their Father vanished for long periods at a time as this was happening, and Lucifer was convinced that He was planning something- the other three agreed with him, but didn’t want to say anything because it encouraged Lucifer’s wild speculations and his speculations could get incredibly wild. It was funny though, and since being borderline confined to Heaven they had very little to laugh about. Michael hoped that their Father would finish what He was working on soon, but as God often told them that His work could not be rushed, he created some small, round things to amuse his siblings and the four of them took turns to see how far they could throw them.  
Lucifer generally won.

  
It was during one of those games that God finally emerged from His work with two more angels in tow. He called one ‘Metatron,’ the other ‘Naomi’, and He said that they would be His personal assistants in all things to do with His creations. Michael found himself brave enough to ask why he was not good enough to be God’s personal assistant and his Father just smiled,

  
“Because, Michael, I have other plans for the four of you.”

  
The Archangels did not see Metatron often, as he was generally following their Father around and recording his plans for future creations, but they did sometimes see Naomi, and she would give them small updates on what was going to happen soon- which was more than their Father did. Michael like to pretend that she was sent by Him to do this, but the reality was that she didn’t really have much to do since she was only second to Metatron. Apparently, Metatron was given a title- Heaven’s Scribe- and he stayed with their Father all the time, and he wasn’t forced to rest at certain time intervals.  
Naomi asked if he was jealous, but he wasn’t.

  
After Naomi and Metatron, God seemed to have decided that even more angels was a good idea, or maybe He had decided that a long time ago and only chose to act on it now, but He began to create more and more, which Naomi would bring to the archangels to look after. She was the one who told them that God’s new angels were different to the original six, and that she and Metatron were different to their original four.

  
“You are Archangels,” she had told him stiffly, handing over another giggling fledgling who was apparently called Bartholomew this time, “Metatron is The Scribe, I am his second, and these-“ she gestured at the children that were milling about the grass, “-are Seraphs.” 

  
Every movement that Naomi made was arguably stiff, and she didn’t seem to enjoy talking like the other archangels. Sometimes Michael wished that he had been given a chance to raise her as well, maybe then she would be slightly more relaxed and happy around the fledglings, but her position allowed her to filter information down to him, so perhaps it wasn’t so bad.

  
“Seraphs.” He repeated after she was gone again, he had noticed the differences between the four of them and the new angels- they only had one set of wings, like Naomi, while he had three and Metatron had two. Not that Metatron really had need for any wings since he was always with God, but that was beside the point.  
“What is wrong?” Raphael asked, as she moved to stand next to him and look across the new angels as well.  
“They are Seraphs.” He told her, feeling clumsy with the unfamiliar word. She screwed her face up and repeated the word carefully, making Michael feel even closer to her as he knew it was not just him struggling with the newness.  
“What does it mean?”  
“I do not know. Only Father knows.”  
She nodded sagely, and then their attention was taken by the fact that several of them were trying to climb on Lucifer- Ishim, Malachi, Ramiel and Anna, if Michael had not mistaken their names again. It was quite hard to remember all their names when there were so many new ones at once.  
*  
_“Did they really climb on Lucifer?” Adam asked, laughing at the image_  
_“They would climb on all of us- and each other if none of us were near.”_  
_Adam laughed again, “That’s adorable.”_  
_“It was, yes.”_  
*  
Gabriel adored the Seraphs, all of them with no questions or hesitation, (Michael supposed that might have had something to do with the fact that he was the only one of the archangels to not have a hand in raising another) but a few Seraphs in particular attached themselves to him with a ferocity Michael had not realised they were capable of. Castiel, in particular, loved Gabriel along with the Seraph siblings he was closer with, Balthazar, Anna, Inias, Samandriel, and Benjamin, plus a few others who seemed to float in and out of different groups.  
Raphael gained a small following as well, of those Seraphs who were impressed by her ability to heal the little injuries that they sustained through play and Lucifer became a focus for those who disliked having to obey Michael’s schedules. He did worry about them slightly, especially since some of them seemed to love Lucifer more than their Father- Azazel in particular acted like Lucifer was above everything else in his small existence, and it was concerning- but, as Raphael pointed out, they were only children still and they had not seen their Father that often as He was still creating other Seraphs, and a new kind of angel He was apparently going to call ‘Cupids’. Naomi told him that she was almost certain that He did not want the four Archangels to raise the Cupids as well, which was a slight relief as there were many, many Seraphs and Michael wasn’t certain that he could deal with another type of angel on top of that.

  
The Seraphs existed, they grew, and they learned with help from their four eldest siblings, and once Father finished creating the Seraphs and His Cupids, He began to spend more time mingling with His children once again. Michael found that he was happy once again, in the same way he had been before the creation of anything other than him- it was different of course, and he had more responsibility and he had to train the Seraphs with his sword as well as practicing to make Father pleased, but it was always bright in Heaven, the Seraphs’ laughter could always be heard from at least one direction and everyone could feel the strength of Father’s presence. Even Naomi seemed to lose some of her stiffness when she helped him to usher the Seraphs from one task to another, and a few times he was almost convinced he saw her smile.  
It didn’t last. Father had more plans for the universe He had begun to create, and He soon tired of just spending His existence playing with fledglings. He returned to the place where He created, taking Metatron and Naomi with Him- Metatron was not missed by anyone, but Michael missed Naomi’s ability to be firm with the Seraphs, and some of the Seraphs missed the way that she would carry them if they refused to move. It got harder to raise them with the lack of divinity that they had all enjoyed while their father was around and some of the younger ones would cry more often and sometimes be completely inconsolable. When Michael had the time to reflect, many years later while ruling Heaven, he would wonder if that was where Lucifer’s resentment of their Father started.  
Naomi came back to report that their Father had created a ‘planet’. The stiffness had returned to her movements and she looked at the Seraphs with her original apathy. She said the planet was to be called Earth and that it would be the site of God’s next creations.  
When given permission, Michael took all his siblings down to Earth to explore.

  
Naomi had told them that, while they were down there a fish- one of Father’s earliest creation would emerge from the water that covered everything, and it was important in the next development of life on the planet. Michael passed on this information to the rest of the archangels and someone made it into a sort of game, in which they competed to find the fish first. If Metatron had spent slightly more time around them and explained the concept of God, they may have known that it was already written who would find the fish, and they had no say in it. However, Metatron fancied himself as above all the other angels and therefore did not spend anytime with them at all if God had not commanded it, and he certainly didn’t go out of his way to start conversations.  
They managed to split the Seraphs into four groups- later these groups would be divided again and called garrisons, but God had no use for organised fighters yet- each with one archangel at the head and they flew down to Earth, so more clumsily than others.  
It was Castiel who found the fish first, he was standing a little way from Balthazar and Inias who were playing with the sand that was found at the edge of the water, when it crawled out- tiny appendages visible and with lungs that started working as soon as it hit the air. He crouched down to watch it and Gabriel, who had been trying to teach some of the other Seraphs to build what he was calling a ‘sand-castle’ noticed and flew over. Carefully he pulled him back to give the little fish some space.  
“Don’t step on that fish, Cassie,” he told him, looking down at the wide-eyed Seraph, “big plans for that fish.”  
Michael joined them soon after, “Have you found Father’s fish?”  
“It seems like it.”  
Everyone gathered around to look, and together as unified angels, for what would be the first and last time, they watched together as the struggling fish took it first movements up the beach and onto land.  
*  
_“And then you have the seven days of creation, or whatever it was, right?”_  
_“It wasn’t seven days- that was the story He told the early humans because they had no concept of that amount of time- but yes, He created night and day, sea and land, the plants, the other heavenly bodies, animals for the land, sea and sky, and then finally humans.”_  
_“Adam and Eve.”_  
_“It was Adam and Lilith originally.”_  
_“Really? I don’t remember that in Sunday school.”_  
*  
God showed off His newest creation to all His children with pride, and He told them that the ‘humans’ were more important than they were for His plan. Michael stayed on Earth for quite a while after that, watching the naked humans stumble about the garden and destroy Father’s plants by pulling things off of them with no care, and scattering those they did not like on the floor. He didn’t understand how something so careless could be more important than the angels who would never dare to destroy any of God’s creations so brazenly. Unknown to him, Lucifer agreed, but he was angry about it.  
Lilith was a beautiful woman and she probably did love Adam at first, but he viewed himself as more like God, since God came to them in a male form, and demanded she submit to him as his wife. Lilith was also proud and strong and she refused to do so- Michael wasn’t present when it happened, but God agreed with Adam and cast Lilith out to reside in a place He had named ‘Hell’ until He decided what to do with her. As a replacement He then created Eve from Adam and the two humans were equal no longer.  
Raphael was horrified at that development, and she had Gabriel and Lucifer supporting her- although Gabriel was just supporting her because he didn’t know what else to say, and Lucifer supported her because it allowed him to develop his narrative of the incompetence of humans when compared to the angels. Michael, however, stood by his Father’s decision. Lilith’s banishment was probably the start of the rift between the archangels, but it was only increased by the return of Amara.

  
If Michael were completely honest, he would admit that, by that point, he had almost forgotten about Amara’s existence- which was forgivable since she had not shown herself since before Heaven was created and his Father did not speak of her often, or at all. Her return was the only time that Michael ever saw Metatron without God before He left Heaven for good- he had been removed from the throne room, along with Naomi, and both of them were sat with their backs to the doors, waiting patiently. Neither of them knew what was happening when he asked, but Michael stayed to talk to them- mostly Naomi, since he still regretted not having looked after her more- and that was why he was there when their Father forcibly removed Amara from the throne room and yelled that she was not to return. Father didn’t even acknowledge the three of them, waiting patiently, He just turned back into the throne room, slamming the door behind Him.  
Later, the four archangels were summoned to the throne room and informed of a special mission they must undertake alongside their Father.  
*  
_“None of you were concerned about that?”_  
_“I think we were just grateful that we were allowed to be near him again.”_  
_“Michael…”_  
*  
The actual fight with Amara would forever remain a blurry memory for Michael, and he was never certain why- it was possible that it was something to do with the sheer amount of power he was exposed in while in the middle of God and Amara fighting each other with the full force of their power.  
There was a cage- he remembered that- and the reason the four of them had been brought along was to lure Amara into that cage and shut the door on her, so she could never escape. Then the lock was sealed with a mark on Lucifer. God had smiled when He told them that, said that the brightness of His Morningstar’s grace would be able to withstand the evil and anger of the mark that originated with Amara. Michael had been a little concerned for Lucifer when He had first explained this, but the utter joy that Lucifer displayed at regaining his position as the Morningstar- God’s favourite- was enough to silence Michael’s concern. If he had taken the time to consider his Father’s battle plan, as he would when he was in charge of making them, he might have wondered why God already had a strategically placed cage that could hold His sister, and a plan on how to seal in forever, as it was he didn’t- he didn’t consider why until he had to seal away his own brother in yet another cage.  
The Mark was obvious on Lucifer’s grace, even if he wore it as a symbol of pride, it was dark and ugly, and Michael hated it.  
*  
_“Michael?”_  
_“Sorry. I just can’t help but think if I had thought through what He was doing…”_  
_“It wasn’t your fault. You know that right?”_  
_“Yes but…”_  
_“No!”_  
_There was a pause and Michael smiled at him sadly, his smile suggested that they should agree to disagree, or they would circulate that conversation for years. Adam sighed,_  
_“Is this when he does the first temptation?”_  
*  
They all expected that God would spend more time with them after Amara’s imprisonment, Naomi had suggested that she thought worrying about His sister was what had taken up so much of His time previously, but she was apparently wrong. God went straight back to focusing on His humans- doting on them in a way that He had never done with His other children. The humans were given a rule then; they weren’t to eat from the fruit that hung from the new tree He placed in the centre of the garden.  
Speculations picked up in Heaven about why God had given them that rule, but nobody really knew, except maybe the new angel Joshua who had been created on the same level as Metatron and left to look after the garden. That was the cause of confusion as well, God had previously said that the humans were to look after the garden, so why did He create an angel to do the same thing? Lucifer was convinced that He had a plan, but he didn’t seem very happy about it. When asked by the Seraphs about Lucifer, Michael didn’t know what to tell them, but he knew that Lucifer was still upset from a second rejection from their Father. God still preferred the humans.

  
The temptation of Adam and Eve was recorded quite accurately by humans in the future, which Michael never understood, except for one part- Lucifer did not go down as a serpent to speak to Eve, but as himself in all his utter beauty. It has been said that the devil comes disguised as everything you have ever wanted, and that was completely true for Eve who only had Adam to speak to the majority of the time, and a friend- who was willing to listen to her theories about the garden and what certain herbs could do- was exactly what she wanted. That was the other part that humans never recorded, Lucifer did not go down once and convince them to eat the fruit, instead he visited regularly and let Eve build up trust in him before he slowly steered the conversation towards the forbidden fruit.  
In the end, that took too long, her natural curiosity couldn’t quite override her belief in God, and Lucifer lied. He told Eve it would make her as clever and knowledgeable as God- even more knowledgeable than Lucifer himself, and he left her with that knowledge. Eve told Adam, and the rest of it- as they say- is history. Although, very few people realise that Eve was heavily pregnant when they were banished from the garden, and she gave birth for the first time as they were trying to find somewhere new to stay.  
The need for the angel Joshua became abundantly clear in Heaven.  
God became noticeably absent again.  
*  
_“Again??”_  
_“Yes, Adam.”_  
_“And I thought my dad sucked.”_  
*  
With their Father suddenly absent and nobody giving orders, Michael was lost and thrust into a position he had not been prepared for. He forbade Lucifer from going down to Earth, and assigned some of his most loyal Seraphs to follow that order- Zachariah and Uriel among others- he hoped that this would ease some of the horrified tension that had built up in Heaven since Lucifer had committed the unthinkable. It did not.  
Heaven became slightly disorganised alongside Michael trying to step up as a leader in the absence of God, and Lucifer’s Seraphs, as he had come to think of them, began to pull back from following his orders and look to Lucifer instead. In desperation he reorganised the small garrisons that had started to form so that Lucifer’s followers were mixed among those still utterly loyal to God. Nobody was really happy, and even those he had separated from Lucifer somehow found their way back. Michael chose to speak to Lucifer about it, although it can be said that it wasn’t much of a choice when looking at his options.  
*  
_“You can skip this bit, I kind of know how it goes.”_  
_“No. No, it’s just that I realised that was the first time we fought.”_  
_“Oh…”_  
_“He accused me of trying to divide Heaven and make our siblings unhappy.”_  
*  
In the end, Michael allowed the Seraphs to return to where they preferred, but the damage had already been done. Maybe it had been done with the original temptation, or maybe it was Michael’s failed attempt to fix it, but it was damaged and his arguments with Lucifer began to get even worse.   
Gabriel and Raphael had no place in that fight, and they watched from the side-lines as their two older brothers, the two who had raised them together and loved them more than anything, began to fall apart. If you had asked either of the younger archangels, before the fighting had begun, if they believed in soulmates, their answers would have been yes, and they would have pointed to Michael and Lucifer as an example. They had always been joined at the hip, as the humans would say much later on in their existence, and they used to move together as though they were part of one being. In the same way that the eldest child watches their parent’s relationship fall apart before a divorce, they kept the Seraphs away from the arguments, and amused them with whatever they could conjure up when the fighting became to much to ignore. They took on extra duties to fill the gaps where Michael and Lucifer had been, along with trying to fill the gaps left by their Father, and when the Seraphs were resting, they would curl up back to back and try not to let the other know they were crying.

  
And then one of the Seraphs, Remiel, who was old enough that she remembered the peace from before but young enough that she thought she could help, tried to break up one of Michael and Lucifer’s fights. She got in between them as Michael lunged with his blade, aiming for the centre of Lucifer’s grace, and she became the first casualty in what would become the first civil war in Heaven. Michael in the cage referred to it as The Civil War because, to his knowledge, there had not been another and he could never have imagined that Raphael, the healer, and Castiel, a Seraph, would be bold enough to start another.  
Her death caused an emotion within Michael that he was not aware anyone could feel, his grace was twisting in on itself and it wanted to destroy whatever had hurt her. He couldn’t because it was him, and the unidentifiable emotion was grief. Unbeknown to him, Michael would become achingly familiar with the feeling as time progressed.  
And then God came back.

  
Michael wanted to think that God had come back because things had gotten out of hand, and he hung onto that belief with a frightening conviction, even when the fighting between him and Lucifer increased. Prior evidence considered; it was more likely that Remiel’s death was another part of His plan.  
Raphael and Gabriel were still struggling with the Seraphs, and it was one time when Michael and Lucifer had retreated to lick their wounds that their Father spoke to the two of them alone for the first time ever.  
“He is building something in the place that Lilith resides.” Raphael had said as they sat alone, overlooking Earth and the children of Adam and Eve- Lucifer had tempted one son to kill another, and by doing so had passed on part of the Mark that sealed Amara’s cage.  
“I noticed.”  
She looked at her brother, he was hunched over and miserable, still mourning the loss of Remiel, and unable to care about much at the moment. She was about to reach over and reassure him, tell him that angels couldn’t simply cease to exist and that she had to be somewhere in the universe when their Father appeared, and both shot to their feet in surprise.  
“Hello, children.” He greeted them with the same benevolent smile that He always wore on His face that didn’t seem as comforting as it had been previously in light of the newer developments in Heaven. He sat with them, an intruder on what had been a quiet space and He waited. They didn’t know it, but He was waiting for them to tell Him how worried they were about everything in Heaven, how they were scared for the future and didn’t know how to look after the Seraphs without Michael and Lucifer anymore.  
They didn’t tell Him, it all seemed too much to vocalise, and in the end, God got tired of waiting for them to talk to Him and instead just launched into His comforting speech.  
“I know that this is a hard time for you, my children, but you must understand that I have a plan.” He smiled at them as though this was the most fantastic news, “There is unrest at the moment but with my plan, it will all be sorted quite soon and all you will have to do is wait.”  
The three of them sat in silence for a little while after He finished speaking, the two archangels unwilling to say anything and unable to express their fear. Eventually He rose and smiled at them again, “Hang in there, my children, it will all come to its conclusion.”  
And then He was gone again, leaving them alone and miserable and even more frightened for the future.  
“I don’t know if I want to find out.” Raphael whispered,  
“Find out what?”  
“What His conclusion to all of this is. I’m scared.”  
“As long as no more Seraphs die, it doesn’t matter.”  
*  
_“Did more Seraphs die?”_  
_“Yes. Not only then but they have continued to fall in number as the years went on.”_  
_“I’m sorry.”_  
_“Lucifer killed a Seraph who dared suggest that he was in the wrong, and I believe that is what pushed Gabriel away in the end.”_  
*  
Anabiel was dead now, as well as Remiel and her death hadn’t even been the same accidental circumstances as Remiel’s. Lucifer had pulled out his blade in a fit of anger and run her through without a pause or a second thought. Raphael had buried her, and she and Gabriel had tried to reassure the Seraphs, tried to tell them that their oldest brothers loved them still, even when two dead seemed to point to the contrary. God had not created His Seraphs to be stupid, however, and they saw straight through the archangels’ desperation. No one said anything, but they all knew that their words held less truth every day.  
The awful routine that had unfortunately been set up continued- Raphael and Gabriel roused the Seraphs come morning, Raphael and Gabriel continued to educate them about Heaven, Raphael and Gabriel played with the Seraphs and indulged them in their silly games, and all the while in the background of their strained normality, Michael and Lucifer fought. Some days, one or the other would join them in playing with the Seraphs and there would be silence in the background- but never both of them together, the four archangels were not a complete unit any longer.

  
That could be the end of the story, we know that the Heavenly Host fell apart, and continued to fall apart until all that was left were warring factions who didn’t even know why they wanted to destroy each other- what happens next is quite common knowledge, but it doesn’t share the awful emotions that come with having family ripped apart, slowly at first and then with a huge pull as ordered by your father.  
Gabriel was the youngest of the archangels, and as such he had been completely doted upon by his three older siblings until the creation of the Seraphs, and during that time he had been instrumental in keeping them together at all times- he would insist upon games that required all four of them, he had been the one to demand all four of them shared a nest, and he was never quite sure how to function without the other three parts of his whole. Now he only really had one other piece, and even she was pulling away to avoid being hurt, so he took a slightly drastic measure and he removed himself from the whole.  
“What are you doing?”  
He jumped, almost guiltily at Raphael’s voice and looked up from where he was carefully taking feathers from what used to be the archangels’ nest.  
“Nothing.” He told her, but she was impossible to lie to and had been considering the same course of action.  
“You’re leaving?”  
“I’m sorry.”  
She shook her head, not angry, not disappointed, but understanding and sat down next to him silently and he suddenly found all the words that had been stuck inside him pouring out for her to hear.  
“I can’t do this, I can’t just sit around and listen to them fighting every day while we try to convince the Seraphs that nothing is wrong because there is something wrong, there is and we both know it, we can both feel it and I’m crying whenever there isn’t anyone to see, and the only person I have is you but even you are busy all the time with the children.”  
They both started crying then, and Raphael found herself begging him not to leave her, while Gabriel begged her to come with him, but they both knew that their choices had been made even before they stepped into their old nest for the first time in years. Gabriel, and only Gabriel, would be the next angel to leave them.  
“I’ll miss you.” One of them said, or maybe both of them because it was true on both accounts and they cried together for another length of time until it was time to send the Seraphs back to their nests for the night. Gabriel did it by silent and mutual agreement because it would be the last time, he would see them, and they deserved to spend that last time with him before he left.  
“I won’t tell anyone.” Raphael whispered as he got up to leave. “I won’t let them know that I knew.”  
Michael, who was regaling this story to Adam in the cage, obviously did not know the full details of their conversation before Gabriel left since he had not been there, but Raphael had given him a short version of it while they were ruling Heaven together and he had wondered why Gabriel had left them. She didn’t tell him about the tears or the fact that she had promised not to tell, just Gabriel’s motivations, and she hadn’t told him that she had wanted so desperately to join him.  
*  
_“What happened to him?”_  
_“I don’t know. He was impossible to find.”_  
_“But he told the Virgin Mary she was pregnant, didn’t he? Or has the bible lied to me?”_  
_“He was impossible to find to everyone except God.”_  
*  
Nobody spoke about Gabriel’s unexpected disappearance; his absence was something everyone was hyper-aware of but ignored out of fear of the reaction of the other archangels. It would have broken Michael that his siblings were afraid of him if he had been aware of anything other than Lucifer’s continued rebellion. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on the point of view of the person looking on, he was not aware of anything other than Lucifer’s continued rebellion and the Seraphs no longer came to him with their little problems or to sit with him and try and persuade him to let them play with his sword. They avoided him unless he gave them an order and that, unknowingly, set the new precedent for Heaven.  
Michael and Lucifer were pretty much evenly matched in their fighting- Michael had taught Lucifer how to fight, and he had taught all his siblings all he knew so that they could be strong. Neither of them ever ‘won’ any of their fights in the traditional sense, they would just fight until they both pulled away due to exhaustion and the cycle would start again the next day. It was a cycle, and it was never ending to the point where their shouts could almost always be heard throughout Heaven. Raphael put the Seraphs through their paces as the blows started again in the background and she wondered if Gabriel was happier than her.  
*  
_“How long did that cycle last for?”_  
_“I couldn’t say. It felt like forever.”_  
_“How did it end?”_  
_“Father finished what he had built in Hell.”_  
_“The Cage.”_  
_Michael made a sweeping motion around them at the unfortunate emptiness. “The Cage.”_  
*  
God came back again, from wherever it was that He had been while Gabriel had run away, His two oldest had attempted to kill each other again and again, and while Raphael had begun to be colder with the Seraphs, and He did not bring good news, although He told them He did.  
“You want me to trap Lucifer in a cage you have built?”  
“He has become too dangerous, my son, and he is the cause of the unhappiness in Heaven.”  
Michael thought about that very carefully, “If I do this, Heaven will return to its previous state?”  
“Yes, my son.”  
“I shall organise my garrisons.”  
Maybe if Michael had known that God had begun to construct the cage, that he was to trap Lucifer in, many years before any violence had broken out in Heaven he might have asked what God’s overarching plan was, but God was careful and Michael did not know that, he only knew that his Father had not lied to him before and he knew that he wanted Gabriel back and he wanted Raphael to be happy once again. She had not laughed in years.  
He told Raphael of the plan because he would need her- she was the one who had been training the Seraphs while he and Lucifer had been fighting. Raphael did not argue, she did not complain or ask Father why this was necessary, she just nodded and began to organisations that Michael wanted. The Seraphs noticed how miserable she was and obeyed without question, they wanted to make her life easier, even if they didn’t quite understand. Unfortunately, some of the Seraphs were still more loyal to Lucifer and they told him what Michael and Raphael were doing- and they embellished the little that they knew as well because they were only young, and they did not understand that there would be consequences greater than they had known before.  
*  
_“You don’t have to tell me about the actual fight.”_  
_“It was so much. He positioned those loyal to him around him, as a line of defence and I had to cut through my siblings to reach him.”_  
_“Michael…”_  
_“There was so- there was… there was so much death, Adam.”_  
*  
Raphael took her place at Michael’s right hand and looked across the battlefield. Because that is what it was- a battlefield, where even more of their siblings would be lost- and she didn’t cry, but she wanted to. Lucifer was surrounded by Seraphs that she had helped raise from fledglings, and if Michael were to succeed, he would need to get through them. She could almost see the path he would take, and she knew which of them would be the first to die.  
“We do this for Heaven.” He had told them, forceful and righteous, “We do this for our Father.”  
Maybe the Seraphs had been emboldened by his short and rousing speech, but she was not, and it was too late to stop anything anyway. She spent a short amount of time wondering what Gabriel would do before she realised- he would have left, and that was exactly what he had done.  
“I should have gone with you,” she whispered into the cold air, “I wish I had.”  
Michael heard her and he wanted to say something, something encouraging and bright to help her get through this, but when he turned to look at her, he realised that he didn’t know what would help her anymore, he didn’t know the cold figure with a sword who had once been the healer. His little sister was gone, a warrior stood beside him, Gabriel had run, and he was about to cast Lucifer out of Heaven.  
“This is what Father knows to be best.” He announced, and then he charged. Raphael kept at his side throughout the whole battle and no matter how much faith she might have lost, she fought as though she was doing the right thing.  
Far away, from a hidden pocket on Earth, Gabriel stood in the rain and watched the burning trails of his siblings fall from Heaven as Michael cast them out, cast them down to live in Hell, and his tears mingled with the rain but it didn’t matter because there was no one around to convince that he wasn’t crying. Lucifer’s fall was the most obvious- he might have become corrupted but there was nothing in Heaven or Hell that could have dulled the overwhelming brightness of his grace. It burned like the sun was falling and his pain was felt for miles. Gabriel fell to the ground and sobbed even harder.  
Unknown to all of them, up in Heaven, Raphael was doing the same thing, sitting in the middle of where the battlefield had been, surrounded by the burnt wing patterns of the Seraphs she had trained. The remaining Seraphs were scattered around, eyes wide open and scared, looking to the two archangels for help where none could be offered. Michael stood on the edge, watching the space where Lucifer had taken his fall and he too cried, for a loss that would never be filled and a family that would never be fixed. The dull ache that wrapped around his grace and wanted him to scream was back, he turned to see the overlapping burns that littered Heaven’s floor and he was lost, completely lost.  
God broke the silence, unexpectedly.  
“Congratulations, you have all saved Heaven.” He smiled His benevolent smile, and turned away abruptly, “Metatron! Come along, we have more work to do.”  
*  
_“That’s it?”_  
_“That’s it.”_  
_“He just left you all there to mourn the loss of, like, half of your siblings and didn’t even try to help?”_  
_“The universe was important to Him.”_  
_“More important than- forget it. What happened next?”_  
_“Naomi was given to us to help raise and train the Seraphs and Heaven continued as normal.”_  
_“What about Raphael?”_  
_“She became more distant and closed off. I think she lost faith in our Father, especially after He left for good.”_  
_“And Gabriel?”_  
_“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since.”_


End file.
